Atwater was an old school presbyterian and professor at Princeton Seminary. The first two pages are very helpful on distinguishing the point at hand. Atwater delineates five senses of the power of contrary choice that are not in debate. The 6th sense is that which Atwater hangs the issue. Atwater defends the necessitarianism of Jonathan Edwards.

“Being faced with the choice between good and bad, only rightly willing was taken to be properly free [by the Reformed scholastics]. A will in bondage to sin was denied to be free, though it acted freely in its own choice to sin.”

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“Life to the lost, to the dead, could come from no other source than the eternal life itself.”